


Don't Wanna Miss A Thing

by foxyboxes



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyboxes/pseuds/foxyboxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An argument leads to an accident, which finds Bakura as an unwilling participant in a fanfiction with an amnesia trope.  ((WIP))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When it came to wagers, Bakura tended to abide by the rule of ‘go big, or go home’.   A king among thieves had little use for gambling needlessly, after all.   Not unless what he wanted was a nigh-unattainable prize worth putting everything he had on the line for.  
  
A Millennium item, for instance.  Or an ironclad guarantee he could watch the Pharaoh rot in nothingness, forever denied the afterlife.  
  
“Yanno, when I said ‘I bet you anything’, I meant more like I’d buy you a Coke or something…”  
  
Or this was good too…  
  
“Stop trying to weasel out of it.”  the spirit said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned himself against the doorframe, watching Marik apply his kohl.   “It’s only dinner.”  
  
“It STARTS as dinner.” Marik corrected him.   “And then after we’re done, you drag me to the carnival that’s conveniently going on right next door, we end up in the tunnel of love, and by the end of it, you’ve got me bent over the back of our wooden swan boat!”  
  
Bakura blinked in response, quirking a brow.   “How...strangely specific of you.”  
  
“You should’ve seen how many reviews that friggin fanfic had.”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve found that one yet.  Spot me the link?.”  the spirit grinned, receiving a scowl from Marik’s reflection    
  
“Not happening!.”  the boy huffed, tracing along his waterline with practiced ease before drawing the first of the two jagged under-eye swoops that were his birth rite.   “The last thing I need is you getting any weird ideas from fangirls who have even weirder ones.    Like I’d ever let anyone bend ME over a swan.”  
  
“Perish the thought.”  Bakura nodded in stern agreement, admirably suppressing the urge to ask him if locations sans swans were acceptable.   “If it makes you feel better, this is the wrong time of the year for carnivals...not to mention the fact we’re in the arse-end of Egypt.”  
  
“You really think the world of fan fiction gives a crap??” Marik demanded to know, whirling sharply to face Bakura brandishing the kohl stick as a makeshift pointer and forcing him to take a step back to avoid ending up jabbed with it.   “One minute we’re in Egypt, and the next, we’re inexplicably at Disneyworld!  It makes NO sense because it knows it doesn’t have to!”  
  
“I’m not going to bugger you in the Tunnel of Love, all right??” Bakura snapped, growing tired of Marik’s dawdling.    “It’s not like we’ve never been out to eat together, for bloody’s sake.”  
  
The kohl stick continued to point accusingly before it slowly began to lower and Marik turned to deposit it back in its pot.   “Whatever.” he grumbled, sounding like a child who had realized he’d run out of argument.    
  
“Don’t know what you’re so bloody defensive over.” Bakura went on, his attention shifting away from Marik to spare his own reflection a cursory examination.   His hair was wild, his shirt was wrinkled, and the pouches under his eyes spoke of a guy who would happily gut someone just for asking what time it was.  Perfect.   “When it’s all said and done, you’ll just deny it was a date anyway and we’ll both carry on like nothing happened.”    
  
“Let’s go.” Marik huffed, blustering out of the bathroom past him.   “This is the LAST time I wager in a Game of Thrones deadpool with you.”  
  
“You’re the one who bet me ANYTHING that Will would make it to the season finale.”  Bakura retorted, an air of smugness in his voice as he trailed after his cohort to the stairs leading up and out of the hideout.   

 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

When the waitress had seated them in the very back of the mostly-vacant restaurant, Bakura had dared to fancy his odds of this going well.  

 With no immediate distractions and no prying eyes for Marik to feel the need to defend his utmost straightness to,  it meant they might be able to actually talk and, in his mind’s eye, it was even a conversation of substance - one in which he was able to get his cohort to admit that it wasn’t so bad, the two of them being out like this.  The mood would lighten as Marik relaxed, and they would, perhaps, decide the night didn’t need to end there.  They could go for a walk, or to see a movie.  Yes...a _late_ movie, with the entire back row to themselves.   And then the lights would turn down, and perhaps Marik WOULD end this night bent over a swan boat...with Bakura playing the role of said boat.

 It _could_ have gone that way, but instead Bakura was glaring, unimpressed, as he watched Marik systematically stack and spread menus across his side of the table, disappearing behind a makeshift wall of them.  A discontent silence reigned between them, broken only by the shuffle of plastic flaps against the tabletop.

 “Have you figured out what you’re ordering yet?” the blonde inquired at last.    
  
“....yes.  I thought I might try the--”  
  
“Good. I need that.” Marik interrupted, reaching across the table to pluck the menu from the spirit’s fingers.   Bakura’s hands remained poised a moment more, as if refusing to believe that had just happened, before they curled slowly into white-knuckled fists of growing frustration as Marik used the final menu to situate a roof of sorts on his makeshift fortress before hunkering fully down behind it, completely hidden from view.    
  
“Really?”  
  
“What?”  The pile of menus shifted slightly so that Marik could peer out of them.  

 “You can’t even give it a rest long enough to honor a bloody bet?”  
  
“You never said anyone had to SEE us together.” Marik argued, ducking back down again behind his wall of entrees and appetizers.   “Ooh, they have lychee ice cream!  Fancy.”      
  
Bakura waited...for what, he wasn’t quite sure.  For Marik to realize he was being ridiculous, perhaps.  Maybe for the waitress to return and tear down Fort Wanker so that she could take their order.   Or maybe...he was wondering why he’d even bothered.   For some reason, he’d thought that this might be different from any of the other times he’d tried to snuff out the tense air that lingered between them and get some thiefshipping going proper...that maybe, knowing this entire “date” was merely the result of losing a bet, might have made it easier for Marik to stomach as it offered him a ready excuse to anyone who asked.    
  
But no.   Marik had clearly dedicated himself to being stroppy about the whole thing, and Bakura was beginning to think there may be better ways to waste his evening other than dragging Marik along after him, kicking and screaming the whole while.    Throwing his napkin atop his empty plate, the spirit rose from his seat.  
  
“Where are you going?”  Marik asked.  
  
“Out.”  
  
“We’re already out.  It was your idea, remember?”  
  
In response, Bakura brought both palms down hard on the tabletop in utter frustration, making the silverware jump and the great wall of menus topple over in a pathetic shuffle, leaving the duo staring one another down.  
  
“Right. Well now you can say it was YOUR idea.  Because as far as I’m concerned, I may as well have never been here.”    
  
“But--”  
  
“ _Goodnight_ , Marik”  
  
He turned sharply on his heel and stalked away from the seating area toward the exit, fuming all the while.  He had no particular destination in mind…as long as it was ‘away’, that would be just fine.   Though, given that Marik had the keys to the bike, and the buses didn’t tend to drop off Somewhere In Egypt, his options were a bit limited, he thought, as he shouldered open the door and was buffeted by a wall of arid desert weather.    If he kept walking deeper into town, he could disappear into the back alleys and let his knives take out his foul mood on anyone he happened to find in the wrong place at the wrong time.     
  
Or, he could probably make it back to the hideout after nightfall, close himself up in his room, and vent his frustrations another way.    He supposed it didn’t matter….either option would involve waking up later covered in bodily fluid and feeling grimly sated.  
  
He was halfway across the parking lot when the glass-paned door he’d just exited through banged open.  
  
“HEY!” Marik’s voice squawked after him.   Bakura didn’t even break stride, stuffing his hands in his pockets.   “Bakura! Hey! Hey Bakuraaaa!  I know you can hear me!” he prattled.  The voice was accompanied of the scuff of Marik’s boots on the asphalt as he jogged to catch up.   “How dare you try to stick me with the bill!  I am WAY too pretty to buy my own dinner!”     
  
Bakura gritted his teeth, quickening his step a bit.  
  
“I mean, geezus, what are you even doing?  First you want to go on this date now you’re trying to ditch me.  What’s your problem, anyway?”  
  
Before he could stop himself, Bakura had rounded on the boy.   “You.” he growled in a voice that could curdle milk.  “ _You’re_ my bloody problem, Marik.”  
  
“Me?  What’d I do?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised, which only served to make Bakura angrier.  
  
“The same thing you’ve done for years! _Nothing_ !” the spirit erupted, throwing up his hands.   “I follow around behind you, cleaning up your messes, fighting your battles, making your _bloody breakfast_ , all the while thinking maybe - MAYBE - it will be worth my time one of these days!   That you’ll finally pull your head out of your arse and think about MY feelings once in awhile!”  
  
“You said you didn’t have any of those!”  
  
“And I wish it had been true!  Is it really so much to ask that you drop the act for one evening??”  
  
“There is no act!  I am completely--”  
  
“--full of it!” Bakura finished for him.   “And why?  For what reason?  Because it would make you less evil somehow to say you like dicks?  It isn’t as if you’re subtle about it with the way you leave your bloody yaoi all over your room!”  
  
“Research, Bakura!” Marik hastily corrected him, his face flushing with outrage as he tried desperately to save face in front of the couple exiting the restaurant that had just caught the tail-end of Bakura’s outburst and was eying them oddly as they passed by.  “I’m always on the lookout for potential Steves.  Have you SEEN the guys in those comics?  Some of them are straight-up diabolical with the way they manipulate entire plots to revolve around getting in their pants!”  
  
“You know what?  Fine.  Yes.  That’s exactly what you’re doing.  Locking yourself up in your room every night with a bottle of hand lotion and a handful of ice cubes to search for minions in badly-drawn pornographic comics where everyone has hands larger than their bloody head.  And you know WHY you’re doing that?  Because you are the WORST villain this series has ever had to suffer!”  
  
“It’s not like you’re so great either!” Marik retorted.  “At least I’M out getting things done instead of sitting around on my butt for four seasons being a grouchy British jerk!”  
  
“Your butt…” Bakura gritted out.  “...isn’t even that great.”

  
There was an immediate, stunned silence on both their parts.  A line had been crossed, and they both knew it.    They were now standing at an awkward crossroads where Bakura could backpeddle and apologize, thereby salvaging their friendship, or….  
  
“In fact,” he went on instead, the mad bull of his temper charging around the china shop of Marik’s ego.  “It’s not even in my top ten. **_Kaiba_ ** has a better butt than you.”  
  
“You…..I---”  Marik was reeling as he took a step back from Bakura, looking as if he’d just been flayed open...Bakura, after all, knew exactly what that looked like.    All at once he turned, shambling in the direction of the bike.  “I’ve got to go.   Like right now.   Yeah.  I’m going.”    
  
“Piss off, then.”  Bakura snapped at his partner’s retreating back, standing his ground rigidly as he watched Marik mount his motorcycle and hastily rev it before peeling out past him in a scuffling of tires.   The wind he left in his wake caught Bakura’s overshirt and made it flap as he turned his head to watch Marik attempt to outrace his wounded pride down the dusty side-road that had brought them here.  
  
Idiot.  

As Marik veered around a sharp corner, fish-tailing as he took it much too quickly, Bakura began to walk in the opposite direction, feeling none the better about any of it.   It wasn’t the first time they’d locked horns, but it WAS the first time it had gotten quite this personal.     
  
“Buggery…” the spirit cursed, kicking at a small rock and sending it bouncing along the blacktop.    
  
The small click of its impact with the nearby curb, however, was drowned out entirely by a much larger thud and screaming of tires, followed by an ominous silence.   Bakura paused, listening, and waiting to hear the distant roar of Marik’s bike driving off into the distance as he reached the main road.     
  
Instead he heard the distant slamming of a car door and the urgent chatter of two voices, of which he could only make out pieces.  
  
“--just drove right out in front of me! I didn’t have time--”  
  
“--call somebody?”  
  
“I’m _trying_!”  
  
It wasn’t just a sinking feeling in his stomach, but in his entire body, leaving him with the sensation of every step taking him an eternity, despite the fact anyone watching would agree that he’d bounded across the parking lot with impressive speed toward the sound of the commotion.    
  
Let him be wrong.  By the various, assorted gods, yes. Please.  Let him be wrong.  Let Marik be at the roadside rubbernecking the accident like the unhelpful twit that he was.  Let him turn up his nose at Bakura when he saw him coming and drive off in a snit.  Yes, even that...he would happily take that.  Just as long as he wasn’t--  
  
Bakura skidded around the blind turn, slipping on the dust almost as gracelessly on foot as Marik had managed on the bike and brought himself to a halt.   The first thing he noticed was that his cohort’s bike was jammed most of the way beneath a car that had been going the other direction.   His wild, desperate gaze, then,  fell on the two men about ten yards behind the collision standing over something.  
  
Or some _one_ .  
  
“MARIK!” he yelled, bolting past the two vehicles and nearly tripping himself over one of the miniature day-glo fuzzy dice Marik had hung from his mirror that had been jarred loose from the impact and now laid in the road.  Another few yards and he’d flung both men aside and scrambled the last bit of distance to the blonde’s crumpled body.   To him, the usually-vibrant youth looked much too still.    “Marik, wake up!”   His hands spidered uselessly on the air over the boy, wanting to shake life back into him, slap him, do SOMETHING, even as an inner voice warned that he shouldn’t be moved.    
  
There was no telling how badly he was--  
  
Marik suddenly bolted upright, blinking owlishly as he tried to bring the world around him back into focus.  
  
“Marik…”  Dismay had shoved itself forefront in the swarm of emotions battering against the cage of Bakura's being.   “Are you all right?”  
  
The boy’s head turned in Bakura’s direction as Marik stared at him a moment.  
  
“Kaiba doesn’t even HAVE a butt…!”  he said in an unsteady, though nonetheless offended, voice before slumping back to the pavement in a heap as he’d been a moment ago.    Bakura hesitated, wondering if he’d merely imagined it, before rifling out his phone to call for an ambulance.  
  
If his partner's backstory was any indication, he reasoned, Marik would _probably_ be fine.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been nearly two hours since the ambulance had dropped them off at a nearby hospital and Marik had been stolen away into the back where they were doing gods-knew-what with him.   During that time, Bakura had become something of a legend in the ER’s waiting room as he paced restlessly up and down the aisles of worn plastic chairs, like a caged wildcat, stopping only long enough to fix himself another complimentary cup of vile, black coffee or, on one occasion, to introduce a waiting patron’s face to the wall for suggesting that he settle down.    
  
The rest of the in-patients had, wisely, clustered in the chairs closest to the front desk and left Bakura to it.    
  
_Piss off, then_

His own words reverberated through his head now and then, making him inwardly flinch.   That was the last thing Marik, in his right mind, had heard Bakura say to him.   Had he not been blessed with fool’s luck, he might well have shuffled off this mortal coil with those being the last words spoken to him _ever_.   

  
As he stood at the small, stained countertop littered with spilt creamer and artificial sweetener packages, pouring himself yet another coffee,  Bakura tried to imagine his world without Marik in it.  Like the styrofoam cup in his grasp, there had been a long-ago time when he’d been clean and new.    And, also like the cup, he’d allowed himself to be filled up completely with fetid blackness.   He had carried himself that way across the ages, for thousands of years, thinking of nothing but the day he could spew it all forth on a world that had dared forget him and the crimes committed against his village.  
  
Then that sodding Battle City debacle had happened, and Bakura had crossed (or rather, dove directly into) the path of an unexpected kindred spirit.  Marik, too, had been a victim of the Pharaoh’s will, and had, likewise, suffered through the ugly smear of blood and terror it had made of his childhood.     If anyone had been entitled to being consumed utterly by their hatred, Bakura had felt, it was the two of them.     
  
And yet, where Bakura had let the shadows in to twist and warp him into some foul, ancient monster,  Marik had remained, in many ways, a child.   Where Bakura saw a filthy world, choked with filthy people,  Marik saw adventures in every direction, just waiting to be had, and millions of NPC’s to play along with him.   Where Bakura’s idea of an ideal evening centered around skulking in dark hallways, knives, and the snapping of bones,   Marik’s involved soda, popcorn, video games, and the two of them squabbling over legroom on the couch.    
  
Somewhere along the line, his utter disdain for everything about Marik save his good looks had become a quiet intrigue.  From that intrigue, infatuation had bloomed - a single, delirious blossom thriving in the poisoned wasteland of his soul that he could never quite bring himself to uproot and crush.    Instead, he’d nurtured it, letting it grow and spread its seed until everything was a confusing mix of desire - desire for his vengeance, desire for Marik - and he didn’t know which he wanted to pursue more.    
  
If death were to take the boy, and trample out that bizarre, colorful garden blooming within him, then….  
  
The coffee he’d been pouring before getting lost in his thoughts brimmed up over the edge of the cup, spilling over his fingers and wrist in hot rivulets.  Bakura hissed, snatching back his hand and grabbing for a wad of napkins to clean himself with just as a nearby door opened.  
  
“Mick Jagger?” a nurse asked uncertainly, consulting her clipboard as Bakura looked up, the mess forgotten.    He’d filled out the admission paperwork as accurately as possible regarding Marik, but had taken more than a few liberties with his own information.   Spying him from across the room, the nurse approached, face carefully fixed in a neutral smile.   “I understand you came in with Marik when he was admitted.   You’re a friend of his?”  
  
“Roommate.”  Bakura corrected in a voice that was more brittle than he would have liked.    “Where is he?”  
  
“He’s all right.   I know you’ve been waiting for awhile, so I just wanted to give you an update on his condition.”  
  
“I want to see him.”  
  
“In a few minutes.   For now, let’s have a seat.”  
  
Bakura’s fingers itched to wrap themselves around the woman’s throat and squeeze, wondering how long she’d be able to sustain that vapid smile of hers.   Instead, grudgingly, he sank himself into one of the nearest plastic chairs as she did the same.  
  
“Obviously, the good news is that he survived, he’s conscious, and that he’ll be able to walk away from this.”   Her brow furrowed and her eyes returned to the clipboard.   “The bad news,” she went on  “Is that he’s sustained a severe concussion.    He’s really soupy right now and it’s hard to hold a conversation with him.  He’ll space out mid-topic, say things that don’t make much sense…”  
  
“That’s not a bloody concussion, that’s just how he IS.”     Bakura’s thoughts touched briefly on the fact that Marik had been so worked up, he hadn’t even put on his helmet before flaming out of the parking lot, and the knife of guilt returned to his gut.      
  
“He’s going to need a lot of rest.” she went on.   “For the next while, anything strenuous will have to be taken off the schedule, and I wouldn’t let him wander off anywhere by himself.”    
  
“For how long?”  
  
“It depends...everyone heals differently, Mick.   Sometimes people are good to go in a couple of weeks, sometimes it takes them a month or more to get back up to speed.”  
  
The nurse had moved on to talk about slight bruising on Marik’s vertebrae and a possible sprained ankle, but Bakura was too busy picturing a  month of Marik lounging on the couch, whining at Bakura to tend to his every need.  He tried to wrap his head around that, and weigh the likelihood that he wouldn’t just end up tossing him in front of another oncoming car inside of a week.   At length, he gave a defeated sigh, knowing already that he would likely end up doing whatever was necessary to get Marik back to rights.  
  
“Once we get the rest of his X-rays back, we’ll be moving him to a room and keeping him for overnight observation.   If you want to go get something to eat, or maybe go home and rest--”  
  
“No. Take me to him.”   His tone of voice suggested that he did not plan to ask a third time.   She hesitated, peering thoughtfully down at the clipboard a moment, and then rose.     
  
“This way.”

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  
“Oh god, what’s what?   I’m running out of places for you to stick things.”  Marik groaned, his speech slow and groggy as the doctor artfully hooked leads to the patches that had been stuck in various places across his chest.  
  
“Shh, we’re just going to watch your heartrate for a bit, Mister Ishtar.”  
  
“Because...listen, don’t think I don’t know what you did with that balloon earlier.   I know EXACTLY where it is right now.”   His hand inched toward the hem of his hospital gown as if he meant to bunch it up and reveal the crimes committed against his junk.    
  
“Once you’re not so dizzy, we’ll take the catheter out, okay?  For now, try not to worry about it.” the doctor assured him, draping the blanket he’d peeled aside back over Marik to spare them both some dignity.  Nearby, the monitor blipped to life as it caught and began recording Marik’s pulse.  
  
“Who even DOES that…?” Marik continued, trying to sound properly outraged about the situation even as his eyes slipped closed again.  “If you wanted to make sure I didn't go anywhere, I’m pretty sure tying me down would’ve been _plenty_ .”  
  
“Just relax, you’ll feel better soon.”  
  
“Tell that to my crotch.”  Marik muttered, already slipping back off to sleep as the doctor paused at the computer station to note a few things and putter out of the room to check his next patient.  He had not been gone two minutes before there was another tap at the door.  
  
“Marik?”  
  
“Mnnn…” he irately grabbed one of the pillows they’d lined the hospital bed with and jammed it over his head, only to instantly regret it as pain exploded through his injured skull.  “GYAH! GEEZUS!!”  
  
“Your friend ‘Mick Jagger’ is here.  He’s been pretty worried about you.”  
  
“Wha?”  Marik squinted up his eyes as he lulled his head in the direction of the door.  “Did he bring David Bowie with him?  Are they going to make out under the pretense of making another music video together?  Because I don’t think I can deal with that right now.”  
  
“It’s me, Marik.” Bakura said, stepping into the room without further ado.   The nurse, not seeming to want to get more involved than she had to, merely closed the door after him to grant them privacy.    Silence, save for the faint whirr of the computer’s fan and the steady beep of the heart monitor, reigned in the room as they stared one another down.   Bakura was the first to look away.   “Look, I didn’t mean for this to happen to you.  I was just--”  
  
“You aren’t Mick Jagger.” Marik snorted, eyes narrowing in suspicion as Bakura rolled his own.  
  
“Afraid not, no.   I was--”  
  
“What do you want?” the boy interrupted again.  
  
“If you’ll _let me talk_ …” Bakura said, annoyance briefly rearing its head once more.   Ugh.  No.  That was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.   He’d already been enough of a wanker today, and wasn’t keen to add ‘argued with a badly-concussed teenager’ to his list of offenses.     “I want...to apologize.   I shouldn’t have put you on the spot and dragged you out that way.  ….or said what I did about your butt.”  In the end, Bakura reasoned that was what Marik was truly waiting for the apology about.    “If you want to stay angry with me for now, that’s fine, but--”  
  
“Hey, what did you say about my butt?  Only my _friends_ are allowed to discuss it in-depth.”  
  
The spirit flinched a bit at the implication that Marik had written him off as no longer being his friend.   “Why would you make me bloody repeat it?  Isn’t an apology good enough?”  
  
“That depends on what you said.”  
  
“You _know_ what I said!”  Bakura watched the way Marik laid there, looking at him expectantly as he awaited his answer...though his gaze was bleary and puzzled.   It was a far cry from the petulant glare Bakura had become used to when Marik knew he held the upper hand in an argument and intended to be as big of a twat as he could possibly be about it.    “...don’t you?”  
  
“Where’s Odion?” Marik asked, seeming to drop the subject entirely as he reached up to rub at one of his temples.  “He was supposed to be getting me a chair and a cat.”  
  
“Marik, you _do_ know you just survived a head-on collision…” .  
  
“Unless….” Marik squinted, leaning in a bit to peer at Bakura critically.  “... _you’re_ the cat.”   Bakura scowled as the other drawled out a thoughtful noise.   “I dunno if you’ll work out.  You’re not NEARLY evil-looking enough.”  
  
“Listen to me - there was an accident.  Your motorbike hit a car, and you hit your head.  That’s why you’re here.”  
  
“Hah!  As IF.   I specifically ordered Odion NOT to hit any cars during our villainous escape.  He knows what happens when he defies me.”    A look of self-satisfaction crept over Marik’s features, though it wavered with uncertainty.   “Seriously, though, where is he?”  
  
“He isn’t here.”  Bakura informed him flatly.  “It’s just you, me, and some people who, apparently, enjoy violating your person with tubes and wires.   Look, do you remember the restaurant?   What about Game of Thrones?”  
  
“Game of Thrones? What’s that, a new card?  I’m only interested if it allows me to draw two cards from my deck.  It’s about time we had a card that did that.”    Even as he prattled on, the heart monitor kicked up a bit in pace, betraying his stirring distress.    “Wait a minute, I know what this is.   You’re in cahoots with Ishizu!”  
  
“What?!” the other male barked in surprise.  “Why, in the name of buggery, would I be working with your sister??”  
  
“You’re trying to distract me until she gets here to take back Slifer and Mega-Ultra-Chicken!”  
  
“You don’t even HAVE those bloody cards anymore, Marik!  Are you even listening to yourself?”    
  
“Oh god, did she already take them back??”  He sat up proper, clutching his head as the heart monitor jittered and sped.  “How could you let that HAPPEN?   That--that just makes me so MAD I could just--”   Marik’s hands balled into his mess of pale hair as his body shook and his teeth ground .   To the untrained eye, he might have been having a convulsion of sorts, though Bakura knew well what was about to happen, and it made him start to warily retreat toward the door.    
  
“Hnnh….nnnh….Nnnnyou know what really sucks about sharing this body with you?” Melvin’s voice burbled up from inside his partner as his muscles bulged and his hair rose on-end.   “You only ever want to pass it to me when you don’t want to deal with wh--Holy FUCK, what did you do to my dick?!”    
  
The heart monitor had given up trying to keep track of Marik’s racing vitals as his body strained to accommodate his darker half’s enormous presence, and a blue light came on, sounding a commanding, shrill alert.   Bakura had no sooner reached for the door handle than he was practically tackled aside by a rushing team of paramedics that surrounded Marik’s bed and immediately got to work.    
  
“Ooh, visitors!” Melvin said, a rancid gleeful tone in his voice.  “I didn’t know you cared.  Who’d like the first hug?”  
  
Bakura heard one of the staff say something that sounded like “adenosine” and then everything was a flurry of hands and tubes.     
  
“Wait, what’s that?  What are you--oh COME oooonnnnnnn….”   the word stretched out and deflated into silence.  The commotion among the medics persisted for a moment before that, too, wound down.   One of them punched a few buttons on the monitor and, in short order, it began to beep again, stuttering a bit as it found the same steady tempo of a few moments ago.    
  
Through a gap in the bustling bodies, Bakura caught a glimpse of Marik once again, reclined and quiet, Melvin’s shadow gone from his presence.  
  
“Mister Jagger?” there was a persistent tugging at Bakura’s elbow that made him wheel around to glare at the nurse who was attempting to lead him from the room and out into the hallway.  “I’m sorry, but we can't have you in the room right now.    If you’d like to wait in the lobby, we’ll page you when you can see him again.”     
  
Under normal circumstances, he would have fought tooth and nail to remain at the boy’s side, calling out impromptu penalty games on anyone who tried to remove him.   Though, given all that had just happened and what little sense it made…  
  
“Yeah.” he muttered, allowing himself to be led.  “Think I could do with a walk.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Sorry this took so long, my schedule got unexpectedly upheaved at work and I've had to take a few weeks to adjust. Here's some more!))

The steel storm door was hefted aside, banging into the sands as it revealed stairs descending down into the darkness of their hideout.   
  
“After you.” Bakura invited.   The boy remained where he was, shifting a dubious look from the dark passageway to Bakura as the noonday sun beat down on the two of them.   “Come on, Marik. I’d rather not add ‘heat stroke’ to our list of accomplishments as of late.” the spirit said, offering him an arm for support.     
  
“I’ve got to give Ishizu credit, she’s REALLY going the whole nine yards, here.”   Marik scowled, continuing to gaze down into the darkness with utter distaste.     
  
“For the last time, your sister has nothing to do with it.”  Bakura grumbled, withdrawing his offer of help and beginning his descent into the shadowy bowels of their lair.   In short order, apparently deciding he didn’t care to be left alone in the middle of the desert, Marik followed suit with an awkward limp in his step.    
  
“First she orders them to hold my wang hostage while she takes back the god cards…”   
  
“No.”   
  
“...and _ then _ she sends a friggin cat to drag me to some tomb-based intervention she’s arranged.”   
  
“Marik, it’s OUR tomb.”    
  
“Yeah, sure.  You say that like we live together or something.”   
  
“We  _ do _ bloody live together!”   
  
“Since when?”   
  
Bakura growled, feeling himself bristle.  “You’re one to talk about going the whole nine yards.  Hasn’t this whole ‘shunning me out of the timeline’ thing gone on long enough?”     
  
The last twelve hours or so had been largely unhelpful.   By the time they’d let him back in to see Marik, he’d been relocated to a proper room and left to his own devices with a television remote and a plastic tray with various bland hospital foodstuffs on it.   Every time Bakura had tried to question him about the accident, Marik had begun flipping through channels, loudly complaining about how nothing was on.  When he wasn’t doing that, fussing with packets of soda crackers, or abusing the call button to make petty demands of the on-duty nurses, he was sleeping off his injuries, leaving Bakura little option except to sit there and wait.     
  
Eventually, they had deemed it safe to send him home.   Armed with an ankle brace, a prescription for muscle relaxants, and a recommendation for a nearby psychiatrist,  Bakura had located them an Uber driver willing to follow the vague, convoluted directions that led to their front door, and now, here they were.   
  
“If I were shunning you, believe me, you would KNOW it--ehh--”  Marik trailed off.  “....that’s right, I still need to name you.   I’ll call you Fluffy, because that is what you are!”   
  
Back to this, then, were they…?   
  
“Or, here’s a thought: you can just call me Bakura, and maybe you  _ won’t  _ wake up to your hair products buried outside.”   
  
“Hey, there’s no need to get friggin DRASTIC.  You could’ve just said ‘Marik, I know we’ve only just met, but I can see already that you are highly intelligent and very sexy.  My name is Bakura.’ ”   
  
Bakura paused on the final step, feeling Marik bump into him from behind and, for once, being too distracted to relish the contact.     
  
“What do you mean ‘just met’...?” he demanded to know, but Marik’s attention was elsewhere, peering past Bakura and into the main chamber that had been repurposed as their living room.      
  
“So this is it, huh?” he scoffed, staring down their ratty sofa as if it had personally wronged him before giving a great put-upon sigh and limping past the spirit as gracefully as the brace would allow him.  “Okay, let’s get this over with.”  Marik said, flopping himself onto the couch.   “Bring everybody in here to read their letters so i can refuse to return home and go on pursuing my life of villainy while sad music plays and everyone tells the camera how disappointed they are that they just wasted their time on national television.”   
  
“Do...” Bakura began, his mouth dry.  “...do you really not know where you are?”   The response was a questioning look from the blond’s direction.     
  
“What, you don’t either?  Well that’s just great!  Not only are we in the middle of Bumfrig, Nowhere, but we’re at the wrong intervention too!”     
  
Bakura had been told at some point during the hospital stay that it wasn’t uncommon for people with head trauma not to remember the events leading up to the incident that caused it, which he had felt was a small mercy in his favor.   Sometimes, the concussion even wiped entire weeks clean off the slate.  However…   
  
“Marik, how long have we known each other?” he tried, seating himself what he deemed a safe distance from his partner on the sofa.  .  “None of your bollocks, just give me a straight answer.”   
  
“I dunno, how long has it been since I got mugged for my god cards?” he countered, letting his eyes skate over the living room landscape and the collection of secondhand furniture therein.  “It was yesterday, right?”   
  
“....something...like that…”   Bakura murmured, the words nearly swallowed by the tightness in his throat.      
  
“Then yeah, since about then.  I hope you’re litter-trained, by the way.  The minute I find pee in my shoes, you’re going  _ right  _ outside!”     
  
Bakura stared, dumbfounded, and finding himself wanting to scream.   Maybe to laugh.   Maybe to do both of those things at once.  Instead, his fingers dug into the padding of the couch’s arm.   
  
“And what about your Evil Council?”   
  
“My wha?”    
  
“Battle City?”   He saw a flicker of interest cross Marik’s eyes and dared to be hopeful.   
  
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds badass!  Did Michael Bay direct it?”     
  
There was a pronounced popping sound as Bakura’s nails punctured through the upholstery, such was the force of his grip.  For years, he and Marik had ambled along together, progressing from grudging cohorts, to sharing living space, to Bakura trying desperately to buffalo them straight past “friends” and directly into “benefits” territory.     
  
The thought of it all meaning nothing as he was forcibly blipped off of Marik’s radar entirely by a plot device was upsetting, to say the least....especially when one considered the scores of dismal backstory memories Marik would have been glad to rid himself of that had gone untouched.   
  
“Foxy boxes.” Bakura said suddenly, desperate to jog SOMETHING in the boy’s memory.   His response was an arched golden brow.   
  
“Yanno, you’re not looking so hot, Bakura.”  Marik noted, leaning in to examine the other’s paler-than-usual countenance.   “Maybe we’ve been down in this hole too long.”   
  
“We’ve been down in this hole for  _ years _ …!”   Before Marik had time to argue, Bakura’s hand shot out, seizing his wrist and dragging him to his feet as he made for the hall.     
  
“Hey!  HEY! OW!” Marik complained as he hobbled to keep up, the ankle brace not being very forgiving.  Bakura didn’t stop, however, until they’d reached the closed door of Marik’s bedroom and he’d flung it open to reveal the inside.   “There, see?  This is yours.” he insisted, waving his hand at the boudoir dressing table that just as often served as a makeshift plotting desk, the purple canopy bed that walked a dangerously thin line between “lavish” and “really tacky”, the wardrobe brimming with tight outfits, and the various, mismatched floor-length mirrors.   “All of it.   Everything in here.”   
  
Marik stepped in, seeming to be drawn by the familiarity as Bakura watched with bated breath, waiting to see recognition dawn...or for Marik to finally admit he’d been screwing with him and hadn’t intended it to go this far.    
  
“Wow, this is WAY better than my last room.” he decided, picking up a small action figure of himself that had been displayed proudly on the bedside table and turning it over in his hands.  Even if Marik didn’t, Bakura recalled the day they’d found the bloody thing at an anime convention and Marik had gotten it into his head he could not go another day living without it.  A plan had been hatched on the spot for Marik to pass by, muttering that Homestuck was overrated, thus drawing everyone in a fifty yard vicinity into a violent debate while Bakura stole the figurine in the confusion.  Unfortunately, the plan had worked a bit too well, causing a brawl that had spanned the entire dealer’s room and had taken security nearly an hour to break up.     
  
“But some of this stuff has gotta go.” Marik went on, swiping a small booklet from where it laid, not quite hidden, beneath his pillow.  “Like this, for instance.  NOT my thing at all.”  he said, holding up the yaoi doujinshi he’d discovered, tweezed between his thumb and forefinger, for Bakura to see.     
  
“Marik, you were up until four in the morning bidding on that!”    
  
“Well I shouldn’t have been!”  Marik shot back quickly, a tight nervousness having crept into his voice as he seemed to consider that maybe he really HAD bought it.  That this really WAS his room.     “And, while we’re at it, have you even read my backstory?   Why the eff would I spend years escaping a tomb just to go live in another one?! It doesn’t make any  _ sense _ !”   
  
“You said it would be ironic.”   
  
“What’s irony got to do with being evil?”   
  
“According to you, the fact Alanis Morissette unironically wrote a song about it once that was not ironic whatsoever.  Which, in itself, was ironic, and therefore made her a scheming evil mastermind.   ….and then you proceeded to sing it the entire time we were moving in.”   
  
It would have been a perfect moment for Marik to cackle and burst into his braying refrain of  _ ‘It’s like RAAAY-EEE-AAAYNE on your WE-DDING DAAAAAY” _ .   No singing, though.  Instead, Marik set both the figurine and yaoi back where he’d gotten them and took a step back,  the creases of worry on his brow deepening.   “Okay.   Okay, new plan.” he decided.   “I am going to lay down, and when I get up again, Odion will have brought me my chair, and we will get back to the pressing matter of stealing a sweet houseboat.  And NONE of this will have happened.”

 

The idea that this situation might be just as distressing for Marik as it was for him was the only thing, at the moment, keeping Bakura from grabbing the blond by the shoulders and shaking him until his teeth rattled in some desperate hope of putting him back to rights.

 

Not relishing another Melvin episode without a team of trained professionals armed with powerful sedatives at the ready, though, he remained where he was, watching Marik clamber into his bed and wriggle beneath the purple satin sheets.   And yet, even now, he held out a fragment of hope that this was merely some sort of cruel prank at his expense….Marik taking his gods-given ability to play dumb to new heights and see how long he could get away with it as revenge for Bakura’s outburst at the restaurant.     
  
It was only after Marik had settled in and shifted onto his side away from Bakura that he finally began to retreat toward the bedroom door, a sour pit in his stomach.    This was...temporary, he decided.   Of course it was.   Had to be.   After he healed up, Marik would begin recalling things again, and soon the entire bloody jigsaw puzzle of Marik’s brain would be put back together, save the few pieces that had always been missing.     
  
“Hey Fluffy…?”   
  
He paused, hand on the door handle, reflexively tensing with dislike at the name.  “What?”   
  
“We don’t….you know…. _ actually _ live together or anything, right?”   
  
“Yes, actually.  We do.”  Bakura explained, fighting to keep a neutral tone of voice as he rolled his eyes nonetheless at the distaste in Marik’s question.   
  
“What, seriously??”   
  
“And we are very, _ very _ gay for one another.”  he added as a sarcastic afterthought, pulling the door closed behind him before Marik had a chance to retaliate.    As he padded his way back to the living room, Bakura rather expected the door to explode open again and Marik to be hot on his heels, loudly correcting the record, denying, and demanding Bakura apologize.   Bakura would not, of course, and the squabble would continue all through ordering takeout, and halfway through whatever Netflix dreck they settled on watching for the evening as they ate.  Such was their routine.   
  
Instead, he reached the couch uninterrupted and flopped himself gracelessly across the cushions, waiting.   A minute passed before he grabbed for the remote.   Two, and he’d managed to turn the television on and rummage out his Cannibal Holocaust DVD from the clutter on their coffee table - a feat mostly unheard of under their roof unless Marik was out cold for some reason.  As the disc was fed into their rickety DVD player, Bakura continued to hesitate, waiting -  _ expecting _ , really - to be bothered.   A part of him seemed to be priming the situation for exactly that with his blatant attempt to take a Marikless time-out with his favorite movie, ready to feign being angry the minute his partner's whining and demands started and normality forcibly injected itself back into their hideout.     
  
Instead of a nasally voice breaking the silence, though, the eerily-soothing melody of the main theme began.     
  
“Bollocks…” the spirit gruffed, ticking up the volume a few notches and settling in to watch, telling himself all the while he ought to be enjoying the peace while it lasted.   Before Marik recovered...which he absolutely would.  Soon, in fact.   
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  
Behind the bedroom door, Marik wasn’t sleeping things off as he’d intended.   When he’d gotten tired of sitting there rigidly in utter offense at Bakura’s parting remark to him,  he had begun fuming.  Just who the frig did that guy think he  _ was  _ claiming they were roommates and then dropping a load of bullcrap like that?       
  
Anyone who knew him, ALSO knew that he was all about the ladies.  Marik would venture to say that there were attractive anime women from both their series and others like it lined up around the block hoping for the opportunity of touching his butt.  Which was foolish on their part since he was way too good for any of them.   
  
At some point during his mental gymnastics, Marik had found the discarded doujinshi at the head of the mattress again and had thumbed through it, lingering on each page solely to reassure himself that it was definitely not something he was into.   The fact that the main character looked a lot like himself was lost on him….and he totally didn’t even notice that the love interest looked startlingly like that Bakura guy.  

 

_ You were up until four in the morning bidding on that! _

 

The accusation danced around in his head as he studied every steamy panel closely.   There was no way HE would ever be caught bidding on--wow, okay, MAYBE he’d drop a couple bucks on it.  Just for the art quality, of course.   It was harder than one might think to find buttocks drawn to his standards…     
  
Eventually, after thoroughly admiring the artistic calibre,  he snapped the book closed, stuffing it hurriedly under the pillow much the way his pre-amnesiatic self had done a few hours before the accident, ignoring the pinching tightness in his groin.    Not a boner, of course, but a rod of righteous indignation.     
  
As he moved to get up, perhaps to storm out of the bedroom and demand Bakura fetch him a glass of water to assert some semblance of dominance over the situation, Marik’s eyes fell on the laptop sitting on the floor beside the nightstand, it’s casing festooned with stickers and decals.   The internet was a luxury that his father had refused to bring into the tomb, insisting that it he didn’t need little Billy learning how to hack into the mainframe and install malicious viruses into their lifestyle like antivenom kits and running water.  

 

It had not been until he and Odion had escaped and begun plotting Marik’s revenge in earnest, that he’d discovered its wonders in a motel room one night from a computer they’d stolen from the front desk.     
  
_ “Wow, this Google thing is pretty amazing, Odion!  I can type pretty much anything I want and it brings me pictures, pages, and movies on that specific subject!” _ __  
__  
_ “Yes, Master Marik…”   the elder male had said dutifully from where he was setting up his cot on the floor after Marik had demanded the entire bed for himself. _ __  
__  
_ “Hey, hey we should type something funny into it! Like...I wonder what happens if you type PENIS!”  _ __  
__  
_ He had cackled as he’d keyed in the word, as though expecting the search engine to call him a naughty boy and redirect him to the Disney homepage while he gloated about Google now being aware of the lengths of his villainy.   _ __  
__  
_ Instead, results had sprawled across his screen and he’d gone silent...a fact Odion had noticed quickly. _ __  
__  
_ “Master Marik? Are you--” _ __  
__  
_ “LEAVE ME.”  he had blustered out quickly.  “....I--I mean, go get us a pizza.  I can’t plot on an empty stomach..” _ __  
__  
_ “It’s like two in the mornin--” _ __  
__  
_ “I COMMAND YOU!!”  _   
  
The end result had been about fifteen minutes of furious self-discovery and a cheap, rubbery cheese pizza Odion had procured from a twenty-four-hour gas station down the road.   The internet had, since then, remained the single higher power Marik held reverence for and turned to in his darkest hour for guidance.     
  
And it was the internet, now, that would deliver validation unto him by revealing that Bakura was a friggin liar.     
  
He dragged the laptop onto the bed with him and powered it on, waiting impatiently for it to finish booting.  The desktop background of himself reclined in a half-dressed state didn’t even get a second glance as it appeared   Photos of his body were so popular, after all, they probably came as a prepackaged option in the latest version of Windows.   His priority, at present, was the browser, which he loaded up immediately.     
  
Upon typing ‘Bakura’ into the hotbar, Marik was given pause as a string of previous search results cascaded into a long dropdown.   Things such as ‘Bakura has no butt’,  ‘Bakura is a huge smelly british jerk’, and ‘Bakura cheats at card games’ were all clickable options…   
  
….which, in Marik’s opinion, were probably  _ also _ prepackaged with the latest version of Windows.   
  
Before he could dwell on the fact that, occasionally, the disparaging search results deviated into things such as ‘Bakura yaoi’ and ‘Limey dongs’, Marik was hastily typing in his own question.   
  
__ ‘Are Marik and Bakura gay for each other?’   
  
With an authoritative punch of the touchpad, he awaited the results, which came up in short order.   

  
Thousands of them.   
  
‘Did you mean ‘Thiefshipping’?’  Google inquired, even as Marik began to scrutinize the links, his eyes growing wider and his mouth growing dryer by the second.   
  
“Holy friggin’  **_GEEZ_ ** …!”


End file.
